


What a Beautiful Day

by AshesTheTerrible



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Inanimate Objects, Lovers, M/M, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Wilderness, boulder - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 09:39:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshesTheTerrible/pseuds/AshesTheTerrible
Summary: Lance had always loved her. The big stone atop that tall cliff. He'd left her, thinking he could find happiness in the world. But he'd been wrong. She was the only thing that made sense.It was a beautiful day to come home.





	What a Beautiful Day

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my first entry for the 2018 Lance/Rock week. Lance is so shippable, we'd even ship him...with a rock. This turned out incredibly sad, but I really enjoyed touching on a subject that I rarely write about. Please be warned that this has suicide mention and implies it heavily so turn on around if that triggers you in any way! I also promise this doesn't reflect my personal headspace in any way, it's just me stretching my writing legs a little. Thank you all for reading and check out all the other works from Lance/Rock 2018 on the tumblr page @lancerockweek!!

Boots crunched the dry, thirsty earth. Rubber soles leaving perfectly placed patterns of shapes in the sandy soil…the proof that he’d been here, once upon a time, on this day. They wouldn’t last long, the weather would wash them away and time would patch up the disturbance that he had caused. Footsteps never lasted long here. The wild always reclaimed the placid state in which it preferred.

Rain would roll across these mountains and come down in graceful sheet, cleansing the land as it always did.

He figured that eventually, the thunderstorms would wash the evidence of his own life off the plains of the planet much the same. The years would pass, slinking by, silent and delicate and there would be little left behind that gave homage that he was ever here.

A stone, left at the bottom of a riverbed, he was just one of so many.

His edges were cracked and distorted; smoothed back to perfection by the tumbling the water offered…but the damage was still there beneath the glossy surface. The wounds had not healed sufficiently; they had only been hidden away. That was how he handled most things. He dug a trench in the backyard garden and kept piling the hardships into the soft dirt. He buried them, shoveling soil into the hole until his fingers bled. But it would never be enough. They were too big to hide away beneath the newly bloomed four-o-clocks. They would always come back, rising from the shallow grave he put them down into.

They would return with their bare bones and their hollow eyes.

They would claw at him with those dirty nails, scratching down his skin, clinging to his body, pulling him down, down, down.

All the way to the bottom.

He couldn’t breathe at the bottom, so far beneath the water, the light fading, the oxygen leaving his lungs.

Lance let go of a tired breath.

It had been a long time since he’d made this journey, far too long. He had his apology all rehearsed in the back of his head, ready to spill it forth. His eyes focused on the trail ahead of him, something he’d marked so many years ago. It was far off the beaten path, secluded away from the trailhead drawn on the little maps offered at the beginning of the park. This was away from all of it. An age old secret that he’d carried in his pack, right next to his sketchbook and his water bottle.

The trees spread out before him, tall and old, staring down at him with speculating eyes.

_Back again are you?_

Their soft voices kissed at his ears, whispered words that traveled along the breeze.

_You always come back. We knew you would be back._

They were right, their low voices singing nothing but truths.

He always came back to her.

Always.

He was so naïve to think that he could run so far away and leave this behind. A creature of habit such as himself did not simply slink away. He’d thought of her often…even in the bed of another, something he should have felt shame for and yet did not. It was as if he always knew…no matter how far he ran, his feet would become tired.

And he was indeed tired.

His shoes were worn through from his travels, his knees were weak, and he couldn’t keep going like this.

_Just a little farther_ , he thought to himself, the afternoon sun beating down upon his small form.

Birds flitted from branch to branch, fussing at one another, singing their unknown language. A secret code that seemed like the entire forest knew. Maybe he’d known it too…once upon a time. But he’d become an outsider. He’d left. He’d broken her heart and he’d given up his place here in this grand, beautiful place.

His slender legs carried him up and over rocks that interrupted his path, swift and graceful.

Through the shade of the trees, just before him, he could see her outline framed against the blue, breathtaking sky.

She’d not aged a bit…unlike him, who had let the years run away with his youth a little too early in life.

He wondered if she would even want to speak to him.

She had every right not to. Lance disappeared into the city, he’d graduated and he’d bid her goodbye. He’d fallen in love with someone that wasn’t her…a young writer with dark hair and a scar across his nose. Their love had been so real and so passionate that Lance had allowed himself to be whisked away by the rush of it all.

But things were not meant to last.

Not forever at least.

Forever was such a silly word that had no place in any language. It had no purpose in conversation. Forever was painted over by sickness, by tragedy, by hardships. It was blanketed by lost love, by fate, by shallow graves.

And here he was crawling back to her like some disgusting thing, looking worn and ragged, beaten by the months…by the years.

They had not been kind lovers to him.

No, not like she had always been.

Her red form glistened in the sunrays, brilliant and shining.

“It’s been a long time.” Lance whispered as he approached the strong, looming boulder.

She stood grand and powerful atop the cliff, a Queen looking out over her lands with a keen, intelligent eye.

Lance’s hiking boots stuttered as he made his way through the sparse plant life. He stood there, met by only silence, the rush of wind whispering around him, blowing his caramel locks out of his eyes momentarily.

He sucked down a slow breath, lungs expanding to capacity.

“I’m so sorry.” Lance said softly, eyes dropping down to the ground in which he stood upon.

More silence.

“I was such a fool…” He stuttered.

His words caught in the thick of his throat, jumbled and painful.

It was a genuine statement after all. He’d been so daft to think that there was more in this world. There wasn’t. Not for him. For others…possibly…but no, not for him.

“ _I forgive you sweetheart_.”

Her soft, airy voice swam through Lance’s senses. It was so delicate, like a dewdrop on a single blade of Johnson grass.

Lance sniffed, a fat unbridled tear rolling down the round of his cheek.

“I want to come home.” Lance sobbed, allowing the strap of his backpack to slide off his shoulder and drop down with a puff of dust.

“ _Of course my love, come back to me. All is well, we have been waiting for you.”_

Lance reached out to run the flat of his palm across her rough surface, feeling the weathered parts of her, still perfect in every aspect. The young man hefted himself up onto her, climbing to her crown, her body warm beneath him with the rays from the sun. Such an old, beautiful boulder…goddess of this life and the next. His first and last love and the only thing that had ever _really_ made sense.

He lay across her, heart beating so hard and so fast. Everything he’d ever done, all the mistakes, all the tears, all the loss…it didn’t matter now. Not with her. She stole all of the hardships away and crumpled them to dust in her old palm.

The sky was so clear, wispy clouds floating lazily in the great blue abyss.

What a beautiful day.

A beautiful day to come home.

“I love you.” Lance whispered as he hefted himself upward, boots stepping to the end of her, eyes peering out at the sheer drop below.

Endless miles of trees and beauty spread like a quilt out before him.

“ _I love you too, welcome home.”_

Lance smiled as her words enveloped him, wind tickling his face.

Two steps forward and the young man’s feet left the edge of the lovely old boulder.

It was a beautiful day.

 


End file.
